3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
God has given us the amazing power of thought - He has constructed our minds in an incredible way so that we can control our thinking in a manner that either glorifies Him or not. We can choose which thoughts that we meditate on, that we dwell on and allow to become part of us and govern our behavior. While the enemy would want to lure us with thoughts that run contrary to God's will for our lives, we can choose whether or not to allow those thoughts to control us. We have to make sure that we maintain a clean heart before God and not be shaped by material that enters our minds that does not bring Him glory.
In Hebrews 4:13, we are reminded of our all-seeing, all-knowing God, who sees our hearts and knows our thoughts:
13Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Psalm 139 says:
23Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.24See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
At Yale University, researchers recently used a brain scanner to identify which face someone was looking at — just from their brain activity. At the University of California-Berkeley, scientists are moving beyond "reading" simple thoughts to predicting what someone will think next.
At Yale University, researchers recently used a brain scanner to identify which face someone was looking at — just from their brain activity. At the University of California-Berkeley, scientists are moving beyond "reading" simple thoughts to predicting what someone will think next.
These are examples mentioned in a recent USA Today story, also published in the Montgomery Advertiser, that explores the possibilities of so-called, "mind reading technology."
At Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, cognitive neuroscientist Marcel Just has a vision that will make Google Glass seem very last century. Instead of using your eye to direct a cursor — finding a phone number for a car repair shop, for instance — he thinks about a device that will dial the shop by interpreting your thoughts about the car.
Just directs the school's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging and stated, "In principle, our thoughts could someday be readable...I don't think we have to worry about this in the next 5-10 years, but it's interesting to think about. What if all of our thoughts were public?"
At Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, cognitive neuroscientist Marcel Just has a vision that will make Google Glass seem very last century. Instead of using your eye to direct a cursor — finding a phone number for a car repair shop, for instance — he thinks about a device that will dial the shop by interpreting your thoughts about the car.
Just directs the school's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging and stated, "In principle, our thoughts could someday be readable...I don't think we have to worry about this in the next 5-10 years, but it's interesting to think about. What if all of our thoughts were public?"
Rather than devices that would lead to mind control, he envisions something more positive, such as devices that would offer opportunities to people with disabilities, as well as the rest of us.
Marvin Chun, senior author on the Yale work, published last month in the journal Neuroimage, sees a more limited potential for mind reading, at least with current functional-MRI technology, which measures blood flow to infer what is happening in the brain.
In his experiment, an undergraduate working in his lab developed a mathematical model to allow a computer to recognize different parts of faces. Then, by scanning the brains of volunteers as they looked at different faces, the researchers trained the computer to interpret how each volunteer's brain responded to different faces. Lastly, the volunteers were asked to look at new faces while in a brain scanner — and the computer could distinguish which of two faces they were observing. It was correct about 60-70% of the time.
"This will allow us to study things we haven't studied before about people's internal representation of faces and memories and imagination and dreams — all of which are represented in some of the same areas we use to reconstruct faces," said Alan Cowen, who led the research as a Yale undergraduate and is now a graduate student researcher at Berkeley.
Get this: The Yale work helps confirm that the brain doesn't just have one area dedicated to a task like perceiving faces. Instead, "thinking is a collaborative process," with three or four areas of the brain working together to allow people to distinguish, say, between the face of their spouse and that of their best friend.
I want to key in on the question posed by Marcel Just, who asked, "What if all of our thoughts were public?" That could be a frightening proposition, couldn't it? It probably would force us to control or even cloak the machinations of the mind. And, it would bring about a level of transparency that probably none of us would want to experience. But, for the Christian, it could give us some spiritual principles to think about...
For one thing, we recognize that our thoughts are not hidden from our all-knowing God. So, even though we may can hide our innermost thoughts from other people, even those who are closest to us, we cannot hide them from the God who made us and loves us. And, He wants us to think in a manner that is consistent with His presence and His principles. If we recognize that He knows the thoughts and desires of our minds, it could motivate us to bring our thinking under the submission of the Holy Spirit.
Also, it has been said that the devil can't read our minds, but he can and will plant thoughts into our consciousness, and we have to skillfully deal with those tempting and distracting thoughts that would serve to pollute our walk with the Lord. If we meditate on the wrong things, we will find strongholds erected in our minds, errant thought patterns that are contrary to Scripture, ways of thinking that need to be reprogrammed by the Word of God and the work of the Spirit.
Finally, the Bible tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made - an example is found in that quote about the Yale study, that there are three or four areas of the brain that help us to distinguish between faces. You have numerous researchers that are exploring the mysteries of the function of the human brain - how complex it is! The intricacies of the human brain are yet another example that point to design. And, every brain is different, uniquely formed by our Creator. Our brains are a gift from God, and as stewards of His resources and the temple of the Holy Spirit, we have to be so careful what we allow to reside in our minds.
Marvin Chun, senior author on the Yale work, published last month in the journal Neuroimage, sees a more limited potential for mind reading, at least with current functional-MRI technology, which measures blood flow to infer what is happening in the brain.
In his experiment, an undergraduate working in his lab developed a mathematical model to allow a computer to recognize different parts of faces. Then, by scanning the brains of volunteers as they looked at different faces, the researchers trained the computer to interpret how each volunteer's brain responded to different faces. Lastly, the volunteers were asked to look at new faces while in a brain scanner — and the computer could distinguish which of two faces they were observing. It was correct about 60-70% of the time.
"This will allow us to study things we haven't studied before about people's internal representation of faces and memories and imagination and dreams — all of which are represented in some of the same areas we use to reconstruct faces," said Alan Cowen, who led the research as a Yale undergraduate and is now a graduate student researcher at Berkeley.
Get this: The Yale work helps confirm that the brain doesn't just have one area dedicated to a task like perceiving faces. Instead, "thinking is a collaborative process," with three or four areas of the brain working together to allow people to distinguish, say, between the face of their spouse and that of their best friend.
I want to key in on the question posed by Marcel Just, who asked, "What if all of our thoughts were public?" That could be a frightening proposition, couldn't it? It probably would force us to control or even cloak the machinations of the mind. And, it would bring about a level of transparency that probably none of us would want to experience. But, for the Christian, it could give us some spiritual principles to think about...
For one thing, we recognize that our thoughts are not hidden from our all-knowing God. So, even though we may can hide our innermost thoughts from other people, even those who are closest to us, we cannot hide them from the God who made us and loves us. And, He wants us to think in a manner that is consistent with His presence and His principles. If we recognize that He knows the thoughts and desires of our minds, it could motivate us to bring our thinking under the submission of the Holy Spirit.
Also, it has been said that the devil can't read our minds, but he can and will plant thoughts into our consciousness, and we have to skillfully deal with those tempting and distracting thoughts that would serve to pollute our walk with the Lord. If we meditate on the wrong things, we will find strongholds erected in our minds, errant thought patterns that are contrary to Scripture, ways of thinking that need to be reprogrammed by the Word of God and the work of the Spirit.
Finally, the Bible tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made - an example is found in that quote about the Yale study, that there are three or four areas of the brain that help us to distinguish between faces. You have numerous researchers that are exploring the mysteries of the function of the human brain - how complex it is! The intricacies of the human brain are yet another example that point to design. And, every brain is different, uniquely formed by our Creator. Our brains are a gift from God, and as stewards of His resources and the temple of the Holy Spirit, we have to be so careful what we allow to reside in our minds.
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